Full disclosure: Ender Başkan is a colleague of mine, and there’s no doubt one of the pleasures of reading Two Hundred Million Musketeers is feeling like I’ve been deep in one of our wide-ranging, free-wheeling chats. But I suspect that’s going to be one of the pleasures of Musketeers for any reader. Başkan’s lively, conversational poetry invites anyone and everyone to pull up a stool and join in the yarn.
He certainly has the knack – common to all good writers – of finding the universal in the specific, so while this collection is deeply personal, his ability to tease out the connections between the micro and the meta gives it resonance for all of us.
He sees the existential in the everyday: ‘some things that aren’t punk that aren’t rock’n’roll might be/revolutionary’. ‘The Erotics of Bookselling’ hilariously elides the relentless courtesy required by retail work with the unflagging equanimity that being a husband and father demands. And while much of this might have the feel of spontaneous outpourings – Başkan is a master of stream-of-consciousness and word association – the rollercoaster energy belies the structure and control that make his work so satisfying. Mood and pace are carefully managed, not just within each poem but across the collection. A long, intense, passionate piece precedes a simple, funny slice of life. Every now and then the work pops with a surprising rhyme. He combines a forensic eye for the absurd (much of Musketeers is very funny) with real passion and, sometimes, rage. Parts are intensely political. And he knows to a nicety how to land a killer blow. Pieces meander along and then – wham. The closing lines of ‘Kadikoy’ left me reeling; the closing lines of ‘Here Is The Shirt…’ left me in tears. This is poetry to get your heart rate up: exhilarating, exuberant, and always entertaining.
